Happy 25th Anniversary to Limp Bizkit’s second studio album Significant Other, originally released June 22, 1999.
The ‘90s are celebrated as a cherished decade which gave us great movies, music, and fashion that is now being rediscovered by younger generations. As the decade closed, there wasn’t a rock band more popular than Limp Bizkit. The band’s 1999 sophomore album Significant Other arguably sits on the Mount Rushmore of nu metal albums. It propelled their frontman Fred Durst to become one of the most talked about musicians of his era and led to one of the most epic live performances in rock history.
One of the things that made the late ‘90s such a memorable time in history was an MTV show by the name of Total Request Live (TRL). There had been other music television shows built around the concept of viewer-requested music videos before, but MTV’s TRL felt a little different because it minced almost all genres of the time. This helped the show keep a heavy rotation of pop boy bands like The Backstreet Boys and NSYNC, pop vocalists like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, R&B acts like TLC and Brandy, hip-hop artists like Eminem and DMX, and pop-punk bands like Blink-182 and The Offspring. Limp Bizkit and Korn represented the metal wing of the popular television show.
This consistent and balanced distribution of genres offered great exposure for the artists who welcomed the crossover potential among fans of different genres and allowed fans to experience the wide spectrum of youth culture simultaneously.
Limp Bizkit was arguably best suited to seize upon this opportunity. Their music was rock in a heavy form with Wes Borland and Sam Rivers delivering a constant flow of guitar riffs inspired by metal bands like Tool and Primus. The band was rounded out by jazz and avant-garde trained drummer John Otto, hip-hop group House of Pain’s turntablist DJ Lethal, and a deliberately obnoxious frontman, writer and vocalist who drew inspiration from sources like Zack de la Rocha (Rage Against the Machine) and Scott Weiland (Stone Temple Pilots). Music fans who were tuning in to TRL for the next Eminem or Busta Rhymes video were intrigued by Durst, with his signature, backward-turned red New York Yankees hat and piercing blue eyes.
Significant Other’s first single “Nookie,” for example, reintroduced the band who returned with a slightly more sophisticated sound compared to their debut album Three Dollar Bill, Y'all (1997). This could at least partly be attributed to the production of Terry Date, widely known for his work producing metal bands such as Pantera and White Zombie. “Nookie” leaned more toward hip-hop as opposed to the band’s hardcore/punk influence from their first album.
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For better or worse, “Nookie” is all the things that usually embody youth culture. It’s loud, brash, hypersexual, and unapologetic in its angst. It’s all the things you say in a drunken rant at 2am in the early morning after a rough breakup when you’re 19 years old, but with skilled musicianship to make it a national heartbreak anthem for a generation.
“Nookie” was followed up by the single “Re-Arranged.” Durst opted not to rap on this song, but offered up another strong vocal performance, while reflecting upon the problems that arise after gaining success. The music video offered some introspection and transparency, as we saw the band in a courtroom—a visual metaphor for Limp Bizkit initially taking the brunt of the blame for the Woodstock ‘99 debacle which occurred in July of that year.
Returning to his rap passions, Durst and the band collaborated with Wu-Tang Clan’s Method Man and Gang Starr’s DJ Premier for their next single “N 2 Gether Now.” Durst, who went on to become one of the most disliked figures of the era, escapes credit for lyrically sparing with one of hip-hop’s elite in 1999, over an arrangement by one of rap’s most sought-after beatmakers of the time. “N 2 Gether Now” is a solid hip-hop track from a band primarily focused on Rock and endures as one of the most efficiently delivered rap/rock mashups to this day.
Limp Bizkit’s final single from Significant Other, “Break Stuff” has created a legend all its own to live out in the annals of rock infamy. The song itself embodies everything that the subgenre or movement known as nu metal purported to represent, in the aggressive rebellion against authority and conformity.
The aforementioned Woodstock ‘99 was the major musical festival held in Rome, NY in July of that year. The festival promoters selected a lineup of the most popular bands and artists of the time. With Limp Bizkit dominating radio and video television, they were added to the lineup. By the end of the band’s performance of “Break Stuff,” the audience was wound up into a full frenzy. There were other disasters associated with the festival, but the initial blame for precipitating the various incidents went to Limp Bizkit, owing to their performance of “Break Stuff.” The knee-jerk blame of Limp Bizkit in time came to symbolize the disconnect that often occurs between generations. The price-gouging on simple resources like basic food and water, along with the poor logistical planning by the festival’s management, helped provide an environment of toxicity that was primed to explode with the performance of a popular song, tailored to channel angst.
Beyond the familiar official singles, Significant Other’s other highlights include “No Sex” with backing vocals from Staind’s Aaron Lewis and “9 Teen 90 Nine.”
There are plenty of music writers who dump on Limp Bizkit and nu metal in general, but music isn’t meant to be one dimensionally introspective and melancholy. If you were in high school in 1999 like I was, you probably tuned in to MTV’s TRL and can appreciate the popularity of Limp Bizkit at the time.
There’s a reason Significant Other sits alongside albums like Korn, Satellite, and Hybrid Theory as albums that define nu metal. It is inquisitively experimental, unapologetically rock, and unflinchingly hip-hop. And these characteristics exemplify many of our youthful journeys as we came of age just at the turn of the century, with Significant Other in our discmans as a loud and brash soundtrack to those days.
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